The 1st European Conference on Teaching and Learning Politics,
International Relations and European Studies
Maastricht, 26-27 June 2014
Conference papers and presentations are works-in-progress - they should not be cited without the
author's permission. The views and opinions expressed in this paper or presentation are those of
the author(s).
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
A fast developing country, the United Arab Emirates is only 43 years old, and
opened its first school in 1952, and its first university in 1977. UAE
universities are state funded, well-equipped, and staffed with high caliber
faculty from across the globe. But, as the UAE government recognizes, the
high school experience has not provided Emirati students with the requisite
skills to take full advantage of university education. The purpose of this
paper is to examine why so many students are ill prepared for university, and
to suggest ways in which the universities can remedy the situation.
The UAE, like many countries, has a national curriculum, provides set
textbooks, and employs national testing.
1
The uniform nature of the
curriculum and testing almost inevitably means that in order for a school to
achieve good results, education is replaced with instruction resulting in the
mindless regurgitation of facts. Teachers recruited in the Middle East and
Asia are all familiar with teaching by rote, and for many it is seen as a
perfectly acceptable way of preparing the young.
In the Middle East, rote learning mirrors cultural aspects of society. The
peoples of the Middle East, and certainly those in the UAE, have a Bedouin
past that entails a strong oral heritage. Stories and poetry, passed down from
generation to generation, require consistency in the telling. In addition to this,
one of the most prized skills in any Islamic society is the faithful recitation of
the Quran. Indeed this skill is of such significance in the UAE that prisoners
have been known to walk away from life sentences as a reward for learning
the holy text in its entirety.2
1
Littlewood. Susan, Transforming the practice of student teachers in the UAE through action
research, Education, Business, and Society, Vol4 no 2, 2011, Emerald Group Publishing, p97.
2 http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display1.asp?xfile=data/nationgeneral/2013/February/nationgeneral_February393.xml&section=na
tiongeneral “The jail terms commuted for successful inmate memorisers includes a cut of 20
years for memorising the Holy Quran in full (30 parts), 15 years against 20 parts, 10 years
1
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
The acceptability of reading, remembering, and repeating may also be
reinforced by Western cultural influences. UAE students enjoy Western
movies and music, and as Kirby Ferguson so rightly points out “ everything is
a “remix”, and we can see how this impacts on the attitudes of students.
Different songs and riffs written by somebody else, layered on top of each
other to create something new, and then claimed as the original work of the
compiler. Students will have hundreds, if not thousands of examples on their
Ipods. But what is a “remix” if not another form of plagiarism? 3
While it may be stretching a point to say that students entering higher
education in the UAE see “imitation as the sincerest form of flattery”, it is
invariably true that through rote learning at school, culture, and religion, the
accurate repeating of the words of others is seen by many as an admirable
and acceptable practice. 4 But therein lies the problem. Learning by rote does
not demonstrate understanding, nor does it promote critical thinking. This
flaw, identified in the UAE by Madson and Cook, has been taken up and
acted upon by the UAE leaders in their educational reforms.5
One of the major problems with rote learning is that it promotes a vast array
of “facts” as though they were some form of fixed knowledge. Natalie
Hopkinson, author of “ The McEducation of the Negro” argues that this is a
deliberate strategy in poorer parts of the USA. The reform, she tells us, “is
against 15 parts, 5 years against 10 parts, one year against 5 parts, and six months against 3
parts.”
3
Kirby Ferguson, http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ accessed 28 May 2014.
Colton, Charles Caleb, Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to those who
Think, Vol 1, p. 114.
5 Harold, Barbara & Stephenson, Lauren, Researcher Development in UAE classrooms: becoming
teacher-leaders, Education,, Business, and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, Vol 3,
no3, 2010, Emerald Group Publishing, p 232.
4
2
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
about learning the rules and following directions. Not critical thinking.” 6 This
method of teaching is also being resurrected in the UK by Education
Secretary, Michael Gove, in his attempt to climb international league tables,
and this despite academics legitimate cries against the mindless “conveyerbelt curriculum”, which consists of “a mountain of data”.7
Without good critical thinking skills students are doomed to at best
paraphrase the work of others, and at worst to plagiarize. Students’ efforts will
be destined to show all the hallmarks of data-mining because they know of no
other way of producing an essay. Responses will be narrative rather than
analytical.
So, how do we get university students to unlearn the certainty with which
they have embraced information delivered in the form of dogma at school?
How do we convince students that for a multitude of topics there isn’t
necessarily a “right” interpretation, or a “right” answer? Dugan Laird, points
out that there is “resistance to, and unpleasant consequences of, giving up
what is currently held to be true”, and for students in the UAE this is
undoubtedly the case. That is not to say that the opinions they hold are of no
value, on the contrary students can actively contribute to debate provided
they understand “why” they hold the view that they do, and are not simply
repeating something through blind acceptance.
Unfortunately, students will often adopt whatever position they think their
professor holds and try to replicate it. In order to do this, students will search
6
Kohn, Alfie, Poor Teaching for Poor Children, Education week, 4/27/2011, Vol 30, issue 29,
p32-33
7 Garner, Richard, Education Editor, 100 academics savage Education Secretary Michael Gove for
”conveyer-belt curriculum” for schools”, The independent, 19 March 2013.
3
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
for sources that support that position, and as a result they make a mockery of
the research process. They will trawl databases with key words, find an article
that may or may not be appropriate, and data-mine a sentence or two.
Needless to say, as no critical thinking is involved in this process, the student
gains nothing intellectually and will, as soon as the course is over, return to
their original belief.8
Turning rote learners into critical thinkers is a challenge, but it is an
achievable one. Many of the students coming into the university, although
they can recite textbooks word for word, have never really “read” anything.
They have been passive absorbers of information, and have not engaged with
the text. Reading the text should not be akin to a monologue but rather more
like a dialogue in which the student argues for or against the main and
subordinate ideas. To remedy this I ask new students preparing for their first
research assignment to submit annotated journal articles that they have used
in their research. Students are expected to show proof of careful reading by
highlighting points of interest, making personal responses to arguments in
the margins, and writing additional thoughts that occur to them. Grading the
work has a significant impact on the effort they make and hopefully begins a
process that becomes a habit. This activity not only encourages the students to
engage in critical reading, it prevents students from data-mining, and lessens
the likelihood of plagiarism as the students, having engaged with the text,
find that they have something to say.
Once the students have read sufficient articles in relation to their research
question or hypothesis the students are asked to prepare aesthetically
pleasing posters on which they write a short abstract, a theoretical framework
for the research, a conclusion, and a bibliography. The content of the poster
8
Laird, Dugan and Scheger, Peter. S, Approaches to Training and Development, 2 nd Edition,
Perseus Books, MA, 1985
4
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
should show evidence of critical reading and highlight the main points that
the student wishes to use in their research. The next step is for the students to
present their posters. For two separate sessions the class is divided into two
with half the students standing by their posters presenting the information to
the other half of the class who are expected to move from one presentation to
the next asking questions, discussing the content and ideas that underpin the
research, and perhaps suggesting new avenues and perspectives. The
students, having been asked the same questions over and over again, become
familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of their research; they also gain a
level of confidence in their own voice. After the sessions the students are
expected to write reflective essays on how the experience has affected their
planned research process. Do they think the exercise was productive; what
might they change, drop, add, and why? The very acts of discussion and
reflection tend to help the students with their organizational skills, as it forces
them to give considerable time to thinking about the validity, purpose, and
direction of their research.
Collectively these steps provide a scaffold that will support students in
moving from rote learning to critical thinking, and allow them to produce
well researched papers that show a fluid train of thought, rather than the all
too common patchwork of evidence held loosely together by a vague idea.
5
The Importance of Cultural Understanding in Teaching and Learning in the UAE
Helena P. Evans, Zayed University.
6